The Dark Side of Halloween

This Halloween was one of the best we have had. We started celebrating in early October by decorating the house and getting in the ghostly mood. Then it was time to start making the rounds ... visiting the Irvine Railroad Pumpkin Patch, previewing OC Zoo-tacular, attending the ENC Fall Faire, and finally some Brick-or-Treat fun at LEGOLAND California! Whew, I'm exhausted just writing all of the things we did.

But it didn't stop there. We still had a pumpkin to carve and some trick-or-treating to do!

Pumpkin carving has always been something I look forward to doing. It's another outlet for my creativity - this year, I let Dylan be the creative one. I know, so selfless of me huh?

He chose a simple design that he thought would be just scary enough for the neighborhood. Evil eyes, no nose, and a monsterish looking mouth filled with sharp teeth.

The initial cut is always exciting because you never know what you will find inside. Will it be filled with seeds and "guts" that will take major elbow grease to get out, or will it be a hollow pumpkin that only takes a few scrapes to clean out? Dylan's pumpkin was just about in the middle this year and it didn't take too long before we started carving away.

This lasted about 2 minutes. Then it was, "Mom, can you do this please?"

With the pumpkin carved, it was just 1 more day until Halloween. Still undecided on what to be, he finally said he wanted to be Anakin Skywalker again. I asked if he was sure because he was Anakin last year. His response was simple. "Last year I was just plain Anakin. This year, I will be Anakin just before he turns into Darth Vader." I didn't realize there was a difference. That is not until he asked me if I had any black eye makeup. Now I was starting to understand.

With a picture in hand, Dylan walked into my bathroom and the transformation began.

My sweet boy has gone to the Dark Side ...

We are now ready for some serious trick-or-treating.

Well, 2 hours later we were quite hungry so it was a stop at Icicles for some frozen yogurt before heading home to check out the candy stash!

Icicles was decorated with glow lights, fog machines, and they even had bloody rubber cut off fingers coming out of the frozen yogurt machines. (Not in the yogurt, but on the machine) Dylan thought this was really cool.

And, I had learned on twitter that they were offering 1/2 price to kids in costume - plus if you bought 2 you got  1 free!! We couldn't pass this up.

Very protective of his candy.